Hello everyone! Thanks as ever for your loyal readership of RocketNews24. Today we have an exciting project that we want to share with you all, and we think it’s one that will make you very happy. Presenting: “Have your Japan wish granted by RocketNews24!”

We’re sure that many of you have dreams of visiting Japan and fulfilling long-held wishes. But perhaps you haven’t quite been able to save up the cash for a plane ticket or didn’t know anyone in Japan to help you out once you got here, so you’ve been unable to realize those dreams.

If that sounds like you, then we’d like to help! If you have a wish you’d like to have granted in Japan then we invite you to enter our competition. RocketNews24 will use our funds and knowledge to make your dreams a reality here in Japan.

The year 2015 is officially the year of publishing here at RocketNews24. Readers of our Japanese sister site may already be aware that our reporters Mr. Sato, Hatori GO, and Takashi Harada have each released books in the past two months alone.

And that was all just a prelude to our grand release: The Secret of RocketNews24 (RocketNews24 No Himitsu). It’s a compilation of the Japanese website’s greatest hits along with all new exclusive content – all for the low, low price of 500 yen (US$4.13).

Boy, have we ever got a treat coming up for all of you loyal Rocketeers!

To help ring in the new year, our staff is busy putting the finishing touches on a 2015 calendar featuring the classy men of our sister site, the Japanese language edition of RocketNews24. Not wanting to be outdone by all the other “eye candy calendars” out there, our team of Japanese writers have truly gone all out to show their appreciation for all the love and support they’ve received from our readers over the past year.

Get ready to feast your eyes on a sneak preview of what’s about to become the sexiest 2015 calendar ever to grace the internet!

Happy Friday, everyone! We trust you’ve all had a fun week and, if you happen to be one of the poor souls stuck in the snow in Kanto and Northeastern Japan this past seven days, that you’re gradually thawing yourselves out.

We have 10 more Asian news-based multiple-choice questions for you this week, touching on everything from nipple chafing to popular TV drama. So let’s not waste any time; let’s get right into it!

Welcome to another edition of Quiz of the Week: where the best news stories from the last seven days come to die. By now you should know the drill: we throw 10 multiple-choice questions at you to see whether you’re keeping your wits about you and to introduce you to some of the best stories in town, whispering unsavoury things about your mother for every question you get wrong.

So stop drooling all over yourself and let’s test those grey cells of yours!

It’s nearly the weekend! Yaaaay! But before you all skip off to join your friends and pretend to be a normal human being, make sure you have all the info you need and are up on the week’s weird news from Asia. After all, how else will you win the respect of your peers? With love and kindness!? Madness. Take our weekly multiple-choice quiz, see how much awesome you have flowing through those veins of yours, and maybe even learn an interesting fact or two.

It’s been another fun week, with plenty of weird, wow and “WTF?” news stories from Asia, so it’s time to recap and, as well as see who’s been paying attention, give you a chance to discover some of the best stories that have emerged over the past seven days. Plus, if you can get 10 out of 10, Mr. Sato promises to lose the loincloth, or at least cover his nipples.

Mongoose taunting, chocolate massage and nostril flaring all after the jump.

Ads should be placed where the eyes naturally go. Take the exposed thighs of young women in mini skirts, for example, which happen to be the landing point for many a wandering eye in Japan. In theory, if you were to paste an advertisement on such a thigh, there’s a high chance that advertisement would be noticed. If the girl is wearing knee-high socks, even better as it creates a sort of erotic frame around the ad. In fact, we would go so far as to say the space on a girl’s thigh between her mini skirt and socks is the perfect advertising space!

Japan actually has a name for this premium space—zettai ryouiki, or “absolute territory”— and there is actually an advertising service that allows women to rent out their own “absolute territory” to advertisers. It’s called Absolute Territory PR, and the number of women participating in it are increasing by the day.

So what’s the attraction for young women to bare their thighs in the name of advertising?Read More

Thanks to the surge in popularity of photography over the last few years, with every man and his (clever) dog snapping photos on their mobile phones, ultra-slim pocket cameras or monster-lens DSLRs, we’ve become a world of image capturers.

As soon as we see something that little bit unusual or aesthetically pleasing, we whip out the camera and snap it from every angle possible, quickly turning something as simple as a cup of coffee into an oiled-up 20-year-old model on the hood of a sports car.

So it should come as no surprise that we at RocketNews24, being in the journalism business and all, should take a ton of pictures.

Over at our sister site Pouch, writer Yoshio has put together a fantastic collection of quirky photos that he’s taken throughout the year, each time thinking “I can definitely use this!” or “there’s a story here!” as he snapped away, but never finding a place to use them.

Alas, every writer must be prepared to cut lines he loves, and not every photo can be used. But of the 3,000 shots that we say goodbye to today as Yoshio gives his hard-disk a clear-out, these 26 just had to be shared.Read More

While manga is ubiquitous in Japan — just ride the subway in any major city and you’ll see people from all walks of life flipping through a comic book — many Japanese people are surprised to hear how popular manga has become overseas. After all, aren’t Westerners only interested in macho superheroes or short comic strips?

Perhaps that was the case in America before, but in recent years many major bookstores have begun to reserve more space near the front of the store for Japanese comics and in some European countries like France and Germany manga occupies a large portion of overall comic sales.

But why?

Earlier this month, we sent one of our Japanese reporters to Comic Market (or “Comiket“), the world’s largest self-published comic book fair and otaku mecca, to interview real live foreigners and ask them why they like Japanese manga so much.

Many foreigners view Japan as some marvelous dreamland of technology and culture; a place where crazy is the norm and embracing fantasy in everyday life is acceptable.

But to Japanese people, Japan is just that place you were born. Everyone and everything is routine, and it’s often difficult to see why the rest of the world get’s so worked up about “Japanese culture.”

Earlier this month, we sent one of our Japanese reporters to Comic Market (or “Comiket“), the world’s largest self-published comic book fair and otaku mecca, to interview real live foreigners and ask them what it is they really think about this country.